Apparently McNuggets aren't the only thing to worry about

           These three texts approach the history and production of our food from the angle of cruelty to animals and workers alike. Estabrook and Cook provide examples of how low-paid migrant workers are exposed to harmful situations every day at their jobs. On the tomato farms of Florida, Estabrook writes how the chemicals blasted into the soil, onto the plants, and even sometimes people themselves affect the workers and cause children to be frequently born with birth defects. The harvesters are paid almost nothing, and the majority being Hispanic migrants, they have no union protection or benefits. They’re only viable living option is to be crammed into trailer slums owned by the farms. Estabrook paints a picture that is eerily similar to cotton plantations of old. Cook chooses to comment on the working conditions of poultry factories. The things he cited really troubled me. Workers get carpel tunnel and tendonitis from pulling out chicken guts. They receive back injuries from slipping on leftover chicken product and blindness from cleaning up. They even can get poisoned by evaporating chicken blood! Are you kidding me? This stuff sounds made up! You can even lose your fingernails to chicken bacteria…the horror. And it doesn’t stop at disease and injury; according to Cook, “cumulative-trauma disorders among poultry workers are 16 times the national average.”

                And humans don’t even receive the worst end of it; at least they get to live. On farms and ranches, cattle, pigs, and chickens are reduced to “production units.” Pollan suggests the way chickens are locked up in cages too small for them to unfold their wings and cattle are herded into pens where they stand shoulder to shoulder in muck is wrong. It’s a kind of racism, “speciesism.” Hey way Pollan describes it, it sounds like a mass genocide of animals. What you have to realize though, is that we are programmed to eat meat. It is anthropologically in our nature and to our advantage that we eat other animals (the species that didn’t went extinct, go figure). So while I can’t agree that we should give up meat, I can agree that animals should be treated fairly.  I liked Pollan’s solution of passing a law “requiring that the steel and concrete walls of the CAFO's and slaughterhouses be replaced with . . . glass. If there's any new ''right'' we need to establish, maybe it's this one: the right to look.” If the meat industry was exposed like this, they would have to better their conditions or face public scrutiny.

                I remember in high school learning about the terrible conditions in meat packing plants in the 1900’s and about the establishment of the FDA. I guess I was naïve to think most of the gross things had ended there. It troubled me when I realized how close to this abuse I am every day. Back home, anywhere I drive there is a good chance I’ll pass by a cattle ranch with droves of animals packed into the mud. I pass cattle trucks hauling animals off to the slaughter houses. And on the way to work downtown, my mom passes by the old slaughter yards every day. So this sounds more horrifying than I meant it to, but my point is, it is just something we all live with. Maybe if people were made aware of what was really going on, the meat industry as a whole could change their conditions, like allowing animals to live “naturally” on farms.